UFO, UAP, or AWB

When Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan in 1853 to force the Tokugawa shogunate to open their ports to American trade, the news rocketed across Japan.  After being almost completely isolated from the outside world for over two centuries, Japan was visited by the ‘Black Ships’ of the United States, a steam powered fleet that displayed obvious technological advantages.

Within two weeks, nearly everyone on the island nation of Japan had learned of the visit, knew of the technological and military advantages of the visitors, and even had an idea of who was aboard the strange ships.  The sudden arrival had profound effects on the culture of Japan, eventually bringing about the downfall of the shogunate, the restoration of the Emperor, and the nation’s rapid adoption of modern technology.

Within a month of Perry’s arrival, there was not a soul on the island who was not completely aware of the American fleet’s arrival.

Currently, news programs on multiple networks are carrying stories about the possible existence of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs.  Wait, excuse me:  the military no longer wants to use that term, they currently prefer Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP.  Presumably, the Pentagon wanted a less pejorative term so that people over the age of fourteen (known as lieutenants) could discuss the phenomena without giggling.

Since the end of the Second World War, every decade or so there has been a new wave of hysteria over saucer sightings.  From 1952 to 1969, the U.S. Air Force even had a task force to investigate such sightings, Project Blue Book, which eventually concluded that all of the sightings had earthly explanations.  Naturally, no one believed this, since a silver foil-covered weather balloon illuminated by a setting sun was wildly improbably compared to the likelihood that extraterrestrials that were smart enough to develop the technology that would enable them to travel lightyears across space, were nevertheless still dumb enough to decide that Roswell, New Mexico, as the intellectual center of Earth, was the visitor’s center. 

Note.  I really admire Roswell, a place that only has two things going for it.  First, they have the remains of two World War II bomber training bases with truly impressive runways, one of which was converted into a couple of nice golf courses.  But, what do you do with the other huge airport, with big, wide runways in the middle of an arid desert?  You charge rent for airlines that want to store airplanes they don’t currently need.  The only other asset the

town has is a wild myth about aliens.  The town has gone to tremendous lengths to accommodate the gullible tourists: there are UFO museums, there is a saucer-shaped McDonalds, and even the town’s streetlights are made to resemble little space aliens.  If life gives you lemons, make dilithium crystal flavored lemonade.  

I can understand the mania.  Unidentified flying objects are real, but the emphasis should be on the word unidentified, which is not a synonym for alien.  Newspapers seldom report the sightings of Identified Flying Objects.

During the craze of the sixties, my brother and I were caught up in the hysteria.  While driving across the north side of San Antonio, suddenly we spotted an oblong dark shape flashing strange white lights in a random pattern.  Convinced that we had spotted a UFO, we attempted to follow it.  The shape seemed to accelerate while turning, and it was extremely difficult to catch up with the object as it circled around the town.  My brother and I were absolutely convinced that what we were chasing was not of this earth.  

I won’t go into all the traffic laws my brother broke that night, but we may have left tire tracks from a small British sports car across a popular local golf course as we chased those lights.  Eventually, we could see that the letters did have a pattern:  if you were directly under the shape, the mysterious lights suddenly arranged themselves into an advertisement for a wrestling match at the downtown arena.  The sign was being pulled by a small plane.  And just like that, our mystery UFO became an IFO.  

Which, I am sure is what will happen to all of the strange reports currently filling the news.  That strange object that can travel 13,000 mph and turn 90 degrees mid-flight will turn out to be a bug in the radar system or something similar.  If this planet were actually being visited by visitors from another planet, it would make at least as big an impact as and be noticed by the locals at least as much as did Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan.

But, how can we be sure that the government isn’t hiding other worldly material at a secret research laboratory in a remote corner of Area 51?  How do we know the government doesn’t  already know for certain that we are being visited by life from another solar system?  There is a very easy and sure-fire test that will answer the question reliably.

Is NASA still having to fight for its meager annual budget?  Do our astronauts still hitch rides on Russian rockets and rent capsule space from Elon Musk?  Has the Space Force started drafting people?  Has the Congressional Committee on Space removed as a member the moronic Congresswoman from Houston who asked for the Mars Rover to drive over and take a photo of the flag Neil Armstrong left on the moon?  Does Congress fight to give an ever-increasing amount of money to research space flight?

If the answer to any of those questions is still ‘no’, then you can rest assured that any UFO is probably just another AWB.  (A weather balloon.)